Companies don't like competition and public procurement is no different

I remember - naively - thinking competition law made no sense conceptually. Surely, the idea of having a market and economic operators inside it was to enable competition for the best to win. So, why do we need competition law and by extension, public procurement rules?

The CEO of Liberty Steel provided this week with a nugget on my own naivety:

"The chief executive of Liberty Steel has called on the UK government to change public sector procurement rules, which he said fail to adequately support British manufacturers against European competitors.

Jon Bolton, who is in charge of Liberty’s Dalzell steel plant in Motherwell, fears UK public contracts are going overseas because the guidelines for steel procurement are too rigid.

Bolton said: “Guidelines for many public sector contracts are failing to properly take into account the regional economic benefit of our bids." "

Translation: we are not competitive but we are local. Give us the contracts because we are based in the UK.

And let's not forget that i) the UK is still inside the EU ii) Liberty Steel is worried with EU competitors, and not Chinese ones.